John Keats - Collected Poetry and Letters (14 books)

* John Keats - Collected Poetry and Letters (14 books)

JOHN KEATS (1795–1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though he lived for only twenty-five years, he produced a canon of lush, sensuous poetry and published letters that stand as profound meditations on aesthetics, negative capability, and the human condition.

Keats's first volume of poems, published in 1817, demonstrated both his belief in the consummate power of poetry and his liberal views. While he was criticized by many for his politics, his immediate circle of friends and family immediately recognized his genius. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer". While his writing is illuminated by his exaltation of the imagination and abounds with sensuous descriptions of nature's beauty, it also explores profound philosophical questions. Jorge Luis Borges named his first time reading Keats an experience he felt all his life.

When exploring Keats's oeuvre, Jack Stillinger's COMPLETE POEMS (1978) is widely considered the gold standard for textual accuracy. Stillinger meticulously restored the readings that Keats himself most likely intended, purging substantive errors found in earlier editions. John Barnard's edition of the COMPLETE POEMS (1973; 3e, 2006) is also highly recommended. Barnard arranges the poems chronologically and pairs the verse with light modernizations, comprehensive notes, classical glossaries, and generous selections of Keats's famous letters. Another well-regarded alternative for a blend of poetry and prose is THE MAJOR WORKS (1990) edited by Elizabeth Cook, which combines all of Keats’s lifelong poetry with a robust selection of his letters and personal marginalia.

In the 20th century, Keats's letters became almost as admired and studied as his poetry, and are highly regarded in the canon of English literary correspondence. Hyder Edward Rollins’s two-volume edition of THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS, 1814–1821 (Harvard, 1958) is the definitive scholarly standard, far surpassing earlier editions in comprehensiveness. Rollins includes 320 letters—featuring all extant correspondence written by Keats as well as a rich collection of letters written to him by friends and family—and provides exhaustive annotations, impeccable textual accuracy, and full provenance.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

== POETRY ==

* A Greeting of the Spirit: Selected Poetry with Commentaries [ed. Wolfson] (Harvard, 2022) – PDF
* Bright Star: Complete Poems and Selected Letters [intro. Campion] (Vintage UK, 2009) – ePUB
* Complete Poems [ed. Barnard, 3e] (Penguin, 2006) – ePUB
* Complete Poems [ed. Stillinger] (Harvard, 2003) – ePUB / PDF^
* Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Modern Library, 2009) – ePUB
* Major Works [ed. Cook] (Oxford, 2001) – PDF^
* Poems [ed. Washington] (Everyman's Library, 2014) – ePUB
* Selected Poems [ed. Barnard] (Penguin, 1999) – ePUB

== LETTERS ==

* Letters, Vol. 1: 1814-1818 [ed. Rollins] (Harvard, 1958) – PDF
* Letters, Vol. 2: 1819-1821 [ed. Rollins] (Harvard, 1958) – PDF
* Selected Letters [ed. Barnard] (Penguin, 2014) – ePUB
* Selected Letters [ed. Gittings] (Oxford, 2002) – PDF
* Selected Letters [ed. Scott, revised edition] (Harvard, 2002) – ePUB / PDF
* So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems to Fanny Brawne [ed. Campion] (Penguin, 2009) – ePUB

PDF^ courtesy of @Mohamed5438


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